In the marketing of frozen confections or perishable food products which must be refrigerated and/or maintained in a frozen state, the most desirable form of individual packages are those which can occupy only a minimum amount of volume in a given freezer or refrigeration compartment such that the customers purchasing such items in bulk for resale at the retail level will have their storage facilities utilized in the most efficient manner. This saves both space and energy for maintaining a given large bulk volume of food stuffs or other perishables at a desirable temperature level or other environmental parameter which is to be controlled.
Present day container shapes which are the most common are frusto-conical containers on which round lids or generally shallow cylindrical caps are placed.
An optimum consideration in the fabrication of a more efficiently packaged container would be in the ability to manufacture the containers, initially, in the old configuration and somehow efficiently and inexpensively convert these to a more efficient packaging shape such that a given volume of material, for example, ten liters of ice cream, could be packaged in a much lesser volume than with either of the more conventional shaped containers.
It is therefore, an object of this invention to provide a new and novel container shape for packaging perishables and the like.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a new and novel container shape for the efficient packaging of perishables which will not only reduce the ultimate volume of a bulk package but will provide means by which the containers can be manufactured by presently used conventional means and subsequently, during the filling and closing process, be converted to the newly shaped configuration desired.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a method for manufacturing a more efficient bulk packaging container shape for food stuffs and the like.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a new and novel apparatus for converting conventionally shaped frusto-conical containers into a container having a square open top configuration and a round bottom with a square lid placed on the square open top configuration when the container is in a loaded condition, to thereby retain the desired shape thereof.
These and other objects of the present invention will become more fully apparent with reference to the following specification and drawings which relate to a preferred embodiment of the present invention.